Night Footage

Shooting at Night

When thinking about filming at night we had to plan where about's we going to go that would give us some good footage. We thought that a petrol station would we allow us to experiment well with night footage as well as having the bright neon light which would lead us to other to try out different camera settings.

This is a screen shot of an e-mail that was sent to group when planning this shoot.

After using google maps we found that we had several options in our local area.

As all the footage we have previously shot have been during day time, we needed to experiment with shooting during the night. This gave me the opportunity to experiment more with camera settings and also consider more health and safety issues that may otherwise not have come up.

We of course had to consider any health and safety issues that might arise when filming during the night. The safety of crew members and equipment must always be considered. We must be sure to be aware of our surroundings, to enable us to notice any risks that may be posed whilst out on the shoot. We were filming road side, which meant we had to take precautions and be especially careful of any passing traffic. Reflectors and additional lighting were mandatory to make sure others, drivers in particular, knew that we were there to avoid any unnecessary accidents. We also had to consider the weather, temperatures may drop during the evening this meant we had to consider warm clothing, and also waterproof wear and covering for the equipment. On top of this, we had to be very wary of other people being around, ensure crew members stayed safe and the equipment was in a safe place at all times.

On top of this, we had to ensure the areas we chose to work in were safe, ensuring no broken glass on the floor extra would cause any issues, again this is made more dangerous by the lack of light, which meant we all had to be extra cautious.

Fig.1

Fig.2

Obviously, as it was night time, I had no natural light to work with. This meant the camera settings had to be adjusted in order to make the most of what little light was available to me. We began by experimenting with still images, to see which settings need to be changed. As you can see from the still images above, Fig.2 is brighter than Fig.1, this is due to differing ISO settings. Fig.1 was set to a low ISO of 100. This meant the image sensitivity was low, making the image too dark. Though Fig.2 is still fairly  dark, particularly in the bottom corners, the image is still brighter due the light sensitivity being increased with an ISO of 6400. 

However, when coming to shoot the moving image, we came across a problem. When the settings had been altered, the camera was still auto-focussing, so the settings we not having much effect on the images. Although this meant the footage was coming out well lit, it meant we were not able to test different settings in order to see the difference. You can see how the light and focus automatically changing in the footage below.



MVI 1692 from Sammie Masters-Hopkins on Vimeo.

Although, these pieces of footage do not necessarily adapt techniques from the New Wave, the still include elements that can link them into our brief.  We are of course working with a low budget, which is a convention that has been with us from the start. Another point to make, might be the level at which the camera is from, appearing as though (particularly with the footage from below) it is just gazing, not focussing on any event or action in particular. This may be linked with the New Wave as the films of this particular movement often commented on the reality of life, as opposed to the glamourised life presented in many Hollywood movie and by using the camera to appear as though we are just gazing at nothingness, we are incorporating the new wave ideas.



MVI 1699 from Sammie Masters-Hopkins on Vimeo.